This is pretty amusing (and not made up). An Indian customer ordered an iPod from one of the country’s leading e-commerce websites, Flipkart.com, and to her surprise found something entirely unexpected in the box.
Earlier today, Nikhil Sekhar revealed on Twitter that his sister ordered a 160GB iPod worth Rs. 20,000 (~$350) from the site, and instead of an actual iPod in the box, found two stones. Nikhil shared an image of the iPod box with the stones on Twitter, which got a lot of RTs and eventually got a response from the website.
https://twitter.com/nikhilsekhar/status/310588221459406848
We are very sorry about the incident with our customer's iPod purchase, we're taking up this issue extremely seriously. 1/3
— Flipkart (@Flipkart) March 10, 2013
We are equally shocked and investigating this so instances like this never recur. 2/3
— Flipkart (@Flipkart) March 10, 2013
Fortunately for the buyer, the website has acknowledged the issue and would be delivering a replacement as soon as possible. Strangely, this isn’t the first occurrence of a customer ordering a product and getting stones instead.
My friend @AxDestruction orders a PHONE @letsbuy @flipkart gets a STONE! @maheshmurthy heavy Valuations ?? pic.twitter.com/zYRxtQ9p
— Vishal Gondal (@vishalgondal) April 5, 2012
Due to the large number of parties involved (Apple/Apple’s manufacturing partner, distributor, website, delivery company), it’s difficult to blame Flipkart entirely for the issue. By reacting promptly to the complaint, they would be hoping that they do not get any further bad press.